‘They Treat Us Like Inmates’: Loved Ones of Incarcerated Individuals Cite Uncertainty and Powerlessness Navigating the System

Entering a correctional facility as a visitor was not made to be easy. Loved ones of incarcerated individuals must pass through an intensive screening process, consisting of a metal detector, a canine dog and, as of March 2025, a body image scanner.

For 71-year-old Bronx resident Candace Miller, who has visited her son at Fishkill Correctional Facility since his incarceration in 2015, a recent visit on August 2 brought unexpected challenges with unfamiliar correctional officers, forcing her to leave without seeing her son.

On this particular visit, Miller described being forced to take off her wig and then her hairnet after she failed to pass the first scanner, resorting to wearing a plastic bag to cover her bare head. Although she had been told to take her wig off for past visits, Miller said in an interview with Radio Catskill that she’s never been forced to do so publicly and had always gone to the bathroom accompanied by a female officer when asked.

“After they made me take my wig off and humiliated me in front of everybody, they told me I can’t see him,” Miller explained.

Despite her repeated concessions, the scanner continued to beep. Confused as to what was setting the machine off, Miller, who has Scoliosis, raised the possibility that it could be her pain patches. But what came after the comment was a snowball effect, one into intense scrutiny from correctional officers who said she couldn’t wear pain patches nor bring her back brace inside.

“Oh, why did I say that? I’ve got something started all over again,” Miller said. “ And they said ‘you cannot wear no pain patches in here, you cannot wear that brace in here.’ But I didn’t try to sneak it in. I placed it in the scanner, so you can clear it to let you see there was nothing in it.”

Miller is not alone in her aggressive experience with officers. Soffiyah Elijah, former executive director of the Correctional Association of New York founder of the Alliance of Families for Justice, a non-profit dedicated to empowering families of incarcerated folks, explained that  family members often do the time with their incarcerated loved ones but suffer in silence — which includes being subject to the same position of powerlessness that their loved ones behind bars face when visiting.

“Harassment is common,” Elijah said. “It’s been common for as long as I’ve been visiting prisons, which is over 50 years and I’m sure far preceded that. Family members are constantly being humiliated. They’re dignity is not being recognized […] It is generally believed and accepted by guards that they don’t have to recognize the humanity of people who are incarcerated or their family members. Now, of course, there are some guards who don’t think that way, so I don’t want to paint with a broad brush, but unfortunately, the general culture in the prisons is that incarcerated people and their family members have no human rights or dignity.”

Miller’s experience comes amid the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) instituting body image scanners as a step in the screening process. The scanners were a condition set by striking officers during the correctional officers strike from February of this year, who cited ongoing issues with contraband. In the past three years, a wave of restrictions have been put into place — regular mail from families has to be photocopied and any packages for inmates must come from approved vendors.

The issue, however, with the body scanners in particular is their high sensitivity, or rather invasiveness. Miller described witnessing other women crying in exasperation for being falsely accused of carrying contraband after scanners detected them wearing menstrual products, including tampons and pads. Both Elijah and Tanya Krupat, Vice President of Policy and Advocacy for the criminal justice reform non-profit Osborne Association also said they’ve been hearing stories of menstrual products as well as medical implants being marked as contraband and loved ones subsequently being denied their visit.

“If a woman is wearing a sanitary napkin or a tampon, the body scanner picks that up. What has been happening more and more frequently is if the body scanner picks that up, then the person is told that they cannot visit because the body scanner picked that up,” Elijah explained. “We’ve actually had incidents where a woman has offered to remove either the sanitary napkin or the tampon, which obviously is not desirable when you’re sitting in a visit, and the guard has said you can remove it, but you’re not going to be allowed to go in.”

Even after officers had identified her wedding ring as the culprit for the beeping, Miller was still unable to pass and eventually walked out of the facility out of frustration. This is when she saw a state trooper, who she believed the correctional officers had called on her, walking towards the doors when three officers rushed out to meet him saying she’s already left.

“People will drive you insane in that place,” Miller said. “The things that they do to people is just inhumane, and if they’re treating us this way, how are they treating our loved ones?”

Following the incident, Miller did file a written complaint regarding her visit on August 2, which has since been forwarded to the Superintendent’s Office of Fishkill Correctional Facility. Upon Radio Catskill’s request to DOCCS for comment on her experience, DOCCS said they deny that Miller was forced to take her wig off and had instead voluntarily informed correctional staff that she had a wig on and removed it based on their preliminary investigation and review of video footage. They also responded that the New York State Police was not involved in any capacity during the altercation, but they did not respond to the allegations regarding Miller being yelled at for wearing a back brace and pain patches nor women being turned away for wearing menstrual products.

Radio Catskill was not able to independently verify the statement before airtime but has filed a FOIL request for the video footage in question.

The Osborne Association, in partnership with DOCCS, runs 19 hospitality centers in NYS for families to mentally and physically prepare for visiting, which includes taking care of potential issues, such as dress code or proper documentation, beforehand. But since the correctional officers strike, visiting for maximum security facilities has remained limited to the weekends and/or one day of the week, leading to longer lines for families, overcrowded conditions inside the facility and shorter visits with loved ones. Krupat said the visiting experience has now become that much more stressful for both families and correctional officers, which can then border on hostile.

“There’s the added stressors with staffing changes, new policies, overcrowding, so the tensions are, I imagine, even higher than normal,” Krupat said. ‘There isn’t really time necessarily for problem solving. I can imagine some officers, if you have a long line, you’re more likely to just deny a visit and move on because you’ve got lots of people waiting than if visits are spread out over seven days and it’s not overcrowded, you can work with an individual visitor a little more and have more patience […] All of these are kind of the ingredients for very stressful, even confrontational interactions.”

But Elijah argues that experiences like Miller’s are much deeper than just the correctional officers strike and its reverberating impacts. In addition to cyclical efforts by the correctional officers’ union to reduce or get rid of visits altogether, she explained that two major dynamics of the NYS prison system are conducive of harassment and abuse against incarcerated folks and their loved ones. First is the absolute power rested with correctional officers, and second is the racial disparity between correctional officers, who tend to be white, and the incarcerated population they are in charge of, which is disproportionately Black and brown.

“The overwhelming majority of the prisons are located in upstate New York, and the demographics in upstate New York is generally lacking in any significant numbers of Black and brown people. The criminal injustice system is racist and a disproportionate number of Black and brown people have their lives interrupted by the criminal injustice system and are incarcerated,” Elijah said. “So that combination of racism and absolute power results in further obliteration of any modicum of respect for the dignity, of the humanity of the people who are incarcerated and their family members. The things that guards say and do to visitors who are most of the time women, they wouldn’t dare say to their mothers, sisters, grandmothers, aunties or daughters.”

And for Doris Chavis, a social worker based in Rochester whose oldest son is currently incarcerated at Wyoming Correctional Facility, this power imbalance has cultivated a culture of fear of retaliation. While trying to visit her son with his sister, Chavis recalled an officer rudely remarking that her daughter’s leggings were not allowed as she was passing through the metal detector and feeling, at that moment, that she could do nothing.

“I could’ve spoken up and said something in a respectful manner, but it doesn’t matter because they don’t like to be challenged,” Chavis shared. “I don’t wanna assume, but I’m just gonna take a wild guess and say he probably would have taken me addressing him as me being disrespectful or defiant or whatever, and either A) take my visit, or B) retaliate against my son. No family should feel like that. I should not have fear to speak up for my minor child in a respectable manner out of fear of retaliation against my loved one whom they have the power and control over. Because even if he would’ve sent me home, it would’ve sucked, but I would’ve been okay. I would’ve come back the next week. But what if he wouldn’t have sent me home and would’ve later on that day, my son would’ve been the next Robert Brooks.”

And the screening process is just one part of the fight loved ones have to navigate without any support from the system. Even getting to the facility in the first place is a major issue for many families. Richard Seller, a millworker living in Lewis County whose wife has been incarcerated at Bedford Hills, said it takes four hours to get to the facility from where he lives. Although he has not personally faced any harassment from officers, he described the fatigue of driving for eight hours round trip, on top of gas expenses, which makes it physically taxing for him and his three children to see their mother. For others, specifically elderly people, it can be physically impossible — meaning their loved ones miss out on those connections.

But he finds a sense of powerlessness still creeping its way in the smaller moments — when DOCCS flagged a video of his son throwing discus at a high school track meet from being sent to his wife, when items in the packages the family sends to Bedford Hills are consistently lost, when bureaucratic inefficiencies meant his family wasn’t able to visit his wife on her birthday.

“We drove four hours down there to see her, and we walked in and the person in visitation said, ‘Today’s not her day.’ And I said, ‘I have an exemption. I called the counselor, and everything should be all set. And they’re like, ‘Let us go look. He never filed the paperwork.’ So we spent eight hours on the road, over a hundred dollars in gas and tolls, and never got to see her on her birthday. She was in tears. My son was pushing me out of the visitation room because I was — I don’t know if I was belligerent — but I was definitely upset and irate [about] all that wasted time and money.”

This is despite the fact that visiting has proven to reduce recidivism, helping maintain connection between incarcerated individuals and their families, especially for children of incarcerated parents, Krupat explained. New York does have the proximity law, effective since 2021, that requires parents to be incarcerated as close to their minor children as possible, and a bill focused on reestablishing inmates’ right to see their families in-person seven days a week and maintain regular communication with them is currently stalled in the Assembly committee.

“Phone calls are important, letters are important, email is important, but visiting is the only way to speak with, see and touch your parent,” Krupat said. “For younger children. there’s so much of the relationship that’s not verbal even. It’s the only way to be reassured that your parent is actually okay, to see them to have important conversations. There’s certain information that is just difficult to share over the phone — conversations that families need to have, decision making, whether it’s related to children, moving schools, medical decisions.”

Especially during the strike, Seller found himself suffering anxiety attacks due to the overwhelming uncertainty of whether or not his wife was okay. Chavis described a similar fear after she had to fight for answers after her son’s lung collapsed, having only been notified of his placement at Wyoming County Hospital after another incarcerated individual told her husband.

“No, no. I don’t feel like I’ve received any support,” Chavis said. “I can’t even put it in words, but no, I literally do not. These systems are beyond broken and it’s sad. It’s sad that there is research out there to show what could lessen our recidivism rates, and the U.S. refuses to follow other countries’ leads instead.”

Correction: This story was updated to correct that the state bill working to reestablish inmates’ rights to family contact is currently in the Assembly rather than Senate committee.

Image: Correctional officers in Fallsburg protesting dangerous working conditions, the solitary confinement reform law HALT and staffing shortages during their unsanctioned strike on February 18, 2025. (Photo credit: Patricio Robayo/WJFF Radio Catskill)